Pub. 6 2011-2012 Issue 3

www.nebankers.org 14 Extraordinary Service for Extraordinary Members. E STABLISHED AT THE LINCOLN Community Foundation, the program will be administered by Community Development Resources, which will help with every- thing from selection of loan recipients to mandatory coaching, training, and mentoring. Community Development Resources is a nonprofit that provides financial products and services to businesses underserved by traditional financial institutions. “I’d like to do something to make a difference to others,” Dittman said in an interview onWednesday, July 27, a day before the official announcement of the program. “This loan opportunity seems to be a need I’ve seen over the years.” Dittman has seen that need in her own bank and in her world trav- els. Something as simple as a sewing machine could become a livelihood, in Nebraska or Egypt. Dittman Starts Micro-lending Program for Entrepreneurs Richard Piersol , Lincoln Journal Star She and Barb Bartle, president of the foundation, paid a backgrounding visit to the almost invisible Omaha office of Grameen Bank, the micro- lending bank started by Muhammad Yunus, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for the idea of creating wealth among the poor, one tiny business loan at a time. Dittman has witnessed the difficulty of recovering fromsetbacks, in one case a home construction craftsman and his family overcoming bankruptcy and bad credit. She spent weeks helping them improve their circumstances. She’s seen people use high-cost credit card debt to finance a business. “It scares me for them,” she said. Andwhile youmight call the Lincoln Community Foundation a charity, Alice Dittman is not. “We’re not picking up old debt,” she said. “There will be denials.” Her prospective borrower might be someone in a beauty salon who wants to add another chair, or someone who needs a computer to work at home, or a housecleaning business. “There are lots of ideas out there,” Dittman said. Thismay, in time, become primarily a women’s lender, as Grameen Bank started out to be. Dittman also is well-known as the first woman to preside over the Com- munity Bankers Association, a division of the American Bankers Association, and for chairing the local and state chambers of commerce, as well as the Nebraska Bankers Association. “My career was made through people who took a chance on me at a time when women were not influential in business,” Dittman said in a press release. “There are plenty of great busi- ness plans with smart entrepreneurs that have been overlooked much like I could have been.” Alice Dittman, a banker if ever there was one, made a living lending, and now, she’s paying it forward. Dittman, hardly retired CEO of Cornhusker Bank, is giving $1 million over three years to establish Alice’s Integrity Loan Fund—a micro-lending program that will offer 6 percent, unsecured three-year loans of no more than $5,000 to people who want to start or grow a business.